blessings, remembering them from cheder:
Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who createst the fruit of the vine; Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe, who bringeth forth bread from the earth.
After the first of these two, Jude takes a sip of wine and passes the chalice round. After the second, he breaks off a chunk of the braided loaf and eats a piece before passing the bread on. No one talks until this has been done.
Jude is handsome, though sallow, with intense, dark eyes. He picks up the book again and reads, frowning.
“Dad, the instructions for this prayer are quite clear, and you’re not following them. Here it is, word for word: ‘The following prayer is said in the Home by the Master of the House.’ Why then do Simon or I have to do it? You’re supposed to be the master of the house, and therefore you’re the one who should do it. At least if you believe in this, which you say you do.”
“I don’t believe in it. I just say you should do it.”
“That’s not a good reason, Dad. It’s not a reason at all. I want a reason to do whatever I do.”
“I don’t have a reason. I’ve been brainwashed, I admit it. I can’t help the way I think, but this is the way we live.”
“I’m sorry, that’s just rubbish.”
“You or Simon have to do it,” Archie replies testily, “because I say so.”
“You’re not making much sense, Dad,” interjects Eli, staring through the spectacles that so magnify his eyes. “You insist that we follow your instruction, but you’re not following the instruction in the book. If that instruction wasn’t there, you wouldn’t even think of doing the prayer in the first place.”
Archie ignores him, reaches for his tumbler of brandy and misses. He glances down more carefully and succeeds this time. He gestures with it in Rose’s direction and says, “What I keep telling you is that your mother is the master of the house.” He gives it a fake French twist: “Your muzzaire is the master of the house.”
“Hah hah,” replies Jude sourly, closing the prayer book with a thump.
Bored by the polemic, Simon swirls Kiddush wine around his tongue. He recognises suddenly that he came close to drowning this morning. He knows what happens to defenceless flesh underwater. He has cut open the leathery mantle of red bait and exposed its meat. Fish will throng around immediately, dart in and tear vivid flesh to fragments. Guilt threads through the sweet tar in his mouth, guilt that he allowed matters to progress so far, nearly causing his death. How could this have happened? He burns quietly with shame, a discomfort infused by wonder that he passed through such stillness and colour, such abundant undersea light.
Eli
Let me move forward to the history of our nation, and jot down this memory as it comes: today we practise the celebration of Yom Ha’atzmaut. The day before is Yom Hazikaron. Yom Ha’atzmaut is difficult to say, but it is a happy day. On Yom Ha’atzmaut, we celebrate Israel’s Day of Independence. Yom Hazikaron is a sad day, because we remember the Israeli soldiers who died to make us independent, and to keep us safe.
Our teacher is Geveret Schechter. She is short and frightfully thin, her hair is a silver beehive that crouches on top of her head. Her cheeks are sunken, there are dark shadows under her eyes. People say that she has stomach cancer and that half her stomach was cut out. I don’t know if this is true, but her stomach does not stick out as it does in most people her age. It is hollow. She has the same accent as my grandfather, though not his thick baritone. Her voice is high and querulous. Everyone treats her badly, and she complains that we aggravate her.
There is a lovely wooden hut in the new school ground behind the Summerstrand shul. It is painted yellow and red, and it is big enough that we can go inside it and play, but not big enough to be a real hut. There is a cement track around which we ride on our trikes. It is a racing track. There is a red jungle gym, and swings with chains, and tyres that you sit in. But I do not like the toilets. There aren’t different toilets for boys and girls, and there are no doors in front of the stalls. I don’t like to go to the toilet at all, and it worries me a lot. What if I really need to go, and everyone can see me, the girls too? When a girl goes, one of her friends stands in the doorway, facing outwards, with her legs and arms spread wide to stop anyone seeing in. The boys never do this for each other. I try to go after the bell has rung at the end of break, and then Geveret shouts at me for coming in late.
Today we learn “Hatikvah”. It is the song of Israel. Every country has its own song, and this is ours. I like the tune, it is beautiful but also sad. There are sixteen of us in the first year of kindergarten, and we are trying to learn the words. The first line is “Kol od balevav P’nimah”. I like the sound, even if I don’t know the meaning, but it takes a long time to sing the last word, “P’nimah”. The tune stretches it out. There are sixteen of us, and we stand in a circle and learn “Hatikvah”. What does “Hatikvah” mean? It means “hope”.
The second line is “Nefesh Yehudi homiyah”. The third line is “Ulfa’atey mizrach kadimah”. “Kadimah” rhymes with “homiyah” and “tzofiyah”, which is the last word of the fourth line.
“Eli! Concentrate, my boy! You’re not paying any attention to ‘Hatikvah’! It is the national anthem!”
Geveret waves her hand at me as she shouts. Her movements are jerky, her voice too sharp.
It is boring to sing the same line over and over again. It is boring to sing the same verse over and over again. Tears of boredom prick my eyes. I am the only child in the class wearing glasses. In fact, I am the youngest boy in Summerstrand, maybe in the world, to wear glasses. Many people stop me and say how cute I look, which makes me uncomfortable. I have a lazy eye. For six weeks last year I had to wear a patch on the eye that isn’t lazy. But now we are singing “Hatikvah”. The second line is “Nefesh Yehudi homiyah”. Waves of boredom creep up my body. They start at my feet and creep up through my legs and my stomach and my chest and into my head.
“Eli! For goodness’ sake!”
Geveret has snatched up my hand in hers, which is dry and scaly. She shakes my hand, as if she doesn’t know what to do with it. She raises her other hand over mine, as if she is going to smack me. She makes three or four pretend smacks, shakes my hand again, and shouts at me for not paying attention. She shoves her face close to mine, leaning down. I look right up into hers, frightened. I try not to breathe, because of the rotten smell of her breath. Her face is pale, cream and grey, smudged with pale colours. She looks like an old photograph that has been tinted by a clumsy hand.
She manages not to smack me and lets my hand go, and leaves me alone.
We are practising “Hatikvah”. I like the music of the fifth line, “Od lo avdah tikvatenu”. The tune rises there, and a hopeful feeling rises in my chest too, at least the first few times. After that, I like it less. I start to worry about going to the toilet. I need to go quite badly, so when it is break, I will have to go at the beginning, not the end, and what will I do if girls come in?
There are pictures on the wall that we painted ourselves, and some posters about Israel. There is a large photograph of a soldier with a patch over one eye. He must have had a lazy eye like mine. That is worrying – I wonder why they couldn’t fix it. He is old, bald but quite handsome, and his mouth is open wider on one side than the other. Perhaps half his mouth is lazy, and he probably speaks Hebrew, so I wouldn’t understand him anyway.
My feet are getting sore from all this standing and singing. In fact, they are bored. To relieve the boredom in my feet, I try pressing down onto their balls, rocking forward slightly. “Hatikvah bat shnot alpayim,” we sing. We have to sing it again, and again, till it comes out in one piece. I rock back and put my weight on my heels. That feels slightly better than the weight on the balls of my feet, because it is more unusual. It is less boring to have the weight on a different part of your feet. Then I try resting my weight on the inside of my feet, but that doesn’t work very well. It makes my legs feel wrong, and it is quite